Sleep

A Chapter by Tyler Lesco

The sun rose up above a still-sleeping landscape, an arid, grassy plain dotted with sparse, twisted trees that stood watch like gnarled sentinels, or like friendly towers willing to give hospitality against the coming dawn. The sun rose, silhouetted against a sky first deep purple pocked with stars and then the golden orange of morning. A mist blanketed the immense ground below.
I stood on the very edge of an enormous rock jutting out from the ground like the bones of a monster from some ancient epic. I could feel the age reverberate through the stone as it remembered every sunrise, probably since the dawn of time.
It shuddered as the sun rose higher into the yet unlit sky, washing heat in light over us in a flash-flood sweep of its amber-flowing gold arms. I squinted my eyes as they adjusted to the light.
Nothing had yet awakened. I watched the mist roll across my vision, and as I watched, I subtly came to realize I wasn't alone.
For the time being, we both said nothing. We watched the cryptic shifts in the writing mist, and the sun continued its course toward the center of the sky.
By midday, nothing had moved. I began to wonder what lived here, or if anything lived here at all. The sun burned away the fog and sickly watering holes became visible. More importantly, near them there were tracks. But there wasn't a creature in sight.
As the sun began to set on that day, still neither of us had said a thing. As far as I know, neither of us even looked at the other. The clouds were shadows painted over a shocked, pink sky. Darknesss came and with it another deep fog that carpeted the plains.
I looked to my right and saw dark eyes shining back at me. I lost myself in them but to be fair, I wasn't exactly holding myself above water. The eyes studied me and I looked anxious, afraid. I felt locked to these gems, held in an iron grip, paralyzed from the neck up. I was sickened and frightened and charged with ecstasy all in the same moment. How could those eyes hold me like that? Why would they?
Though I didn't look away, I never looked away, I was brought back to my mind by a pack of hyenas yelping and laughing their heads off in the distance. They screamed and chattered as they came by, galloping gleefully and haphazardly past our rock, our sanctuary. We were held above everything, we were safe, we were alone, and we were together. The demons screamed and yelped and yipped their way by, nipping at each others tails, and the cries faded as they came.
I stared at those eyes for hours. It was like I was swimming in them. Their depth surrounded me and suffocated me and if i got far enough away from myself, I'd never find my way back. I couldn't imagine what was going on behind them. I thought, these must be God's eyes.
And then, like snapping your fingers, the magic was broken, the bond dissolved. In a second, the eyes went from omniscient to frantic and afraid.
There was a low rumbling off in the distance.
I was still in shock. I reeled, laying over on my back on the hard stone. In my mind, I was still there, frozen in place, I was still swimming, I couldn't pull myself up. My own eyes stared blankly up at the stars.
What finally brought me back was the rumbling. It grew and grew, closer and closer, louder and louder, until I re-entered my body. I pulled myself, unsatisfied, from the dream of the eyes. I saw the owner throwing a troubled stare into the distance. I did the same.
All I could see were mountains.
But no, now as I looked, things became visible through the mist. They reminded me of pogo sticks, growing ten feet tall and hopping off on their own. Candy canes growing exponentially and walking away, two by two. Or, of-
Giraffes.
The rumbling rose. It wasn't faint anymore.
As I watched the animals came closer and closer. The heads became visible, bouncing over the mist. They jockeyed back and forth and their heads bobbed, and then -below them- I could see...
Trunks, tusks.
Elephants then.
The rumbling got even louder as the enormous creatures got closer. They looked like hulking ghosts galloping madly through the mist. I could see the eyes watching with sorrow and worry and sick interest.
The rumbling came to be a low, white noise that pushed everything else out of my head. I edged toward the face of the rock to better see them as they ran by.
Except that isn't what they did. As I watched, the elephant in front charged straight into our old monster, first splintering both tusks then shattering its skull in a spray of blood, bone, and brain.
Others followed. Giraffes lowered their heads like battering rams and broke their necks like twigs. Rhinocerous charged with all their blind hearts at the unforgiving stone. Death came easily for most, though not for all. Those latter were trampled soon enough.
There came a time when I could no longer watch. I turned around and slumped against the rock, sick with death. I noticed the girl was crying. Then I noticed I was crying.
It went on like that for hours until the time just before dawn, the time when the world brightens up a little but not a whole lot. An elephant hit the wall with an exceptionally jarring crack, but this time, I felt it jolt in my legs. I turned and saw a crack off towards the other side of the rock
As I watched carefully, with each new death the crack got bigger. Soon it started to spiderweb into new, smaller cracks, and those got bigger too. The cracks spread out along the line of the biggest, and I felt my stomach drop as they wormed their way under my feet. I heard the girl scream, but as the the little harbingers grew and spread beneath us, we sat calmly and accepted our fate. I watched the eyes take on their previous depth and felt my life begin to shake.
In that light just before dawn, the rock crumbled and broke under us. I watched the girl fall over the edge and then felt the ground under me turn to shale. I saw the ground rush up to meet me. The rumble of the stampede screamed in my ears.